What is the most difficult step on the spiritual path? It would be easy to assume that the first step, the decision to know the Divine, would cause the most difficulty. After all, it is like getting in a boat that you’re not sure of on a sea you’ve never sailed to reach an unknown destination! The most you may have to go on is the knowledge that others have set sail, reached the destination and…

When the words mystic and love show up in the same sentence, Rumi usually comes to mind. But let’s travel back 500 years before Rumi’s birth to meet Rabia Basri (Rabia al-Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya 717-801 CE) a Sufi mystic poet who inspired his writing.  We can’t presume to know exactly what it was about Rabia’s writing that caught Rumi’s eye. It could have been the fact that Rabia was female, courageous and quite eccentric, but it’s far more likely it was her radical view of love.  

What…

Court jesters were highly valued by kings and emperors, trickster gods were an important part of many religions and cultures, and the Bible tells us that, “God chose the foolish things of the world.” (1 Corinthians 1:27) Even in our society, which has enthroned the logical brain, the fool is still held in high esteem by many. We may call them comedians, satirists, wits or artists, but they serve the same important function as the jesters and tricksters of the past: exposing absurdity that…

Long before the venerable text Tao Te Ching was penned, the philosophy we think of as the Tao or Dao, meaning ‘way,’ ‘path’ or ‘route’ was forming. The Tao is not a name for a human-like god, a thing or a power. It’s more accurately translated as the matrix of the universe, its ultimate life essence.  In light of quantum discoveries, we could think of the Tao as the consciousness, energy and potential that is the foundation of All That Is. Penned in China around 500-300 BCE, the…